Ten.Two Hundred & Sixty-Three

1. I listen for the echoes of the owls but all I hear is the growling of large engines.

2. She is up early. I ask her to measure out the milk and mix the cinnamon and sugar. Today's muffins are just plain muffins. The kind that everyone will eat. I'm not sure what I did differently today but each spoonful of batter looks like a cloud.

3. I am spending too much time on this. Where is this going? Where do I want to go? What is the point of this anyway?

4. I eat two slices of quiche and a handful of fruit, swallow it down with a dirty chai. I know that the vines running along her fence will soon be covered in emerald ivy. Her tulips are also beginning to come up. It makes me long for the return of the farmer's market. Where will I grow flowers of my own?

5. The kids beg to stay and see old friends. I decline but am then urged to at least drive by the old school so that they can see it. They miss this place as much as I do. They ask why we can't move back, see! Look at all the house for sale! You like old things!

6. I've always wondered if you can come back to the places you've left. If anything is ever as really good as what you remember it to be.

8. I think about how the books is finished. I need something new to read. My heart is craving more poetry. I will probably reread 19 Varieties of Gazelle before moving on to something new. Probably more Naomi Shihab Nye. Maybe Marilyn Nelson.

9. It occurs to me that we are living in different worlds. Our realities are overlapping but not the same. Which means that our words seem to missing one another, almost as if we are talking past each other and not to each other.